Jasper John Dooley, NOT in Love (2 page)

When Jasper John Dooley was the Star of the Week, everybody in the class wrote Compliments to him. Ms. Tosh stapled them all together in a book that Jasper took home with him. The Compliment at the end said:
I love you, Jasper.

Back when Jasper was Star of the Week, he didn't know who had written the I-love-you Compliment. But now he knew. It must have been Isabel.

Jasper stayed away from Isabel for the rest of the day. After school, Mom was waiting to walk him and Ori home. She always walked them home because Ori's mom was busy with Ori's baby sister. “How was your day?” she asked.

“Terrible,” Jasper said. He was still wiping his cheek, trying to make the goopy feeling of being licked go away.

“Terrible? What happened?”

“Our reading buddies got changed,” Ori said. “I'm not Jasper's reading buddy anymore.”

“Come on,” Jasper said. “Let's go.”

They started walking.

“Who's your buddy now?” Mom asked Ori.

“Zoë.”

“Who's yours, Jasper?” Mom asked.

“She's following us,” Jasper said.

Mom looked back. Jasper had seen Isabel out of the corner of his eye. Now he pretended to be walking like a monkey, bent over and scratching under his arms. That way he could secretly peek at Isabel from under his arm without her knowing. If Isabel saw him peeking at her, she would probably think he loved her, too.

Mom stopped and waited for Isabel to catch up. “I hear you're Jasper's new reading buddy.”

“Yes,” Isabel answered. “Today is the best day of my life!”

“Keep walking,” Jasper said to Ori.

It was hard to walk like a bent-over monkey peeking under your own arm, but Jasper did it all the way to the corner of the schoolyard. All the way he watched Isabel smile at Mom without any front teeth and Mom smile back with teeth. Luckily, he was too far away to hear what they were talking about.

“Today's the best day of Isabel's life,” Ori said to Jasper. “She got to lick you.”

Jasper looked around for a sword to slay his friend with.

“Now she's coming over with your mom,” Ori said.

Jasper hid behind a telephone pole. When Mom and Isabel reached him, Isabel said to the telephone pole, “Bye, Jasper! See you tomorrow, Jasper!”

Then she ran away.

Mom laughed. She, Ori and Jasper crossed the street. At the alley, Ori waved and went home to his house. Jasper waved back. He was glad Ori hadn't told Mom that Isabel had licked him. He was so so so embarrassed.

At home, Mom made Jasper a snack. While she was cutting up carrot sticks, she told him, “Isabel invited you over for a playdate.”

“A
what
?”

“You know what a playdate is. She asked for our phone number. So her mother could call. When I told it to her, she repeated it back until she memorized it. She said she'd remember it forever.”

Mom was smiling while she told this to Jasper, the way she had smiled at Isabel while they were talking.

Jasper flopped down on the kitchen floor and groaned.

“Don't you think it would be fun to have a playdate with somebody besides Ori?”

“Ori is my best and closest friend. He lives just across the alley and one house down. If something so so so embarrassing happened to me at school, he wouldn't tell anybody about it. That means he's a good friend. And we're both knights.”

“Can't Isabel be a knight?”

“No. She's a girl. All girls do is stay inside and brush their hair.”

“Are you sure about that?” Mom asked. She put the carrot sticks on the table and went to the fridge for the dip.

“I mean when they're at home,” Jasper said from the floor. “At school, they play babies.”

“Well, I'm a girl. I do all kinds of things.” She spooned the dip out into a little bowl.

“What things?” Jasper asked.

“There's your snack,” Mom said. “I guess you think it got there all by itself.”

Jasper sat up on the kitchen floor, but the phone started ringing, so he flopped down again. “Don't answer it!”

Mom stepped right over him and went to the phone.

“If it's about the playdate?” Jasper said. “Tell her I can't come.”

“She'll want to know why,” Mom said.

Jasper closed his eyes tight. “Tell her I'm sick.”

But it wasn't Isabel or her mom calling. It was Jasper's Nan. Isabel's mom didn't call until after supper, when Jasper was in the basement scraping the dryer screen to get more lint for his collection. Jasper wasn't there to say “No, no, no, no!” to the playdate, so Mom went ahead and said “Yes.”

That night Dad came into Jasper's room to say goodnight.

“I hear you have a playdate with a girl tomorrow,” he said.

“I'm not going,” Jasper said. “I feel sick.”

Dad put his hand on Jasper's forehead. “You do feel hot.”

“Do I?” Jasper said. “Oh, good!”

Dad asked him to stick out his tongue. He studied it, nodding and hmming. “Yes. I know what you've got.”

“What?” Jasper asked.

“A terrible disease. Girl-itis. I used to get it a lot myself.”

“I'm dying of it!” Jasper groaned. He rolled around on the bed clutching his stomach. “Agh! Rawr! Grrr!”

“I don't get it,” he told Dad. “At school? All she ever does is tell on me. I'm not even her baby. I'm Zoë's baby. And now we have to have a playdate!”

The next morning, Jasper got the lates for school and had to rush. He forgot all about the playdate. At recess and lunch, he was so busy playing knights with Ori and Leon in the bushes at the back of the schoolyard where Isabel couldn't find them that he didn't think about the playdate. After school, Mom was waiting, but when Jasper went over to her, Isabel came out of nowhere and grabbed his hand.

Jasper remembered the playdate then.

Mom was there to walk Ori home. Jasper had to go with Isabel! He kept his arms crossed tight so Isabel couldn't hold hands with him. As they walked, he looked over his shoulder and saw Mom and Ori walking in the opposite direction. He felt all watery inside, like he would never see them again.

Mom turned and waved. “Have fun!” she called.

Ori turned, too. He pretended he had a sword in his hand and was stabbing himself with it.

Isabel lived farther from school than Jasper and Ori did. The whole way she kept trying to make Jasper uncross his arms, pulling his wrist and tickling him, so she could hold his hand. She talked and talked.

“What do you want to do, Jasper? Are we going to play babies? We don't have to. We can play lots of things. We can play anything.”

“Don't talk so much, Izzy,” her mother said. “And don't pull on him like that. Can't you see you're scaring him?”

Isabel's mother didn't have any freckles. Also, she had all her teeth.

Isabel's house was about twice the size of Jasper's house. Isabel's dog was about a million times bigger than Jasper's, because Jasper didn't have a dog. It ran to the door to greet them, a huge black and brown dog that came up to Jasper's chin. Isabel hugged it and let it lick her freckly cheeks with its big slobbery tongue. Jasper finally uncrossed his arms so he could cover his face with his hands.

“This is Rollo. You can ride him. Get on, Jasper.”

“No, thanks,” Jasper said.

“Let's go upstairs.”

Isabel rode down the hall on the back of the giant dog. Jasper followed, staying far enough behind that he wouldn't get clobbered by Rollo's big waggy tail. At the bottom of the stairs, Isabel said, “Sit, Rollo.” The dog sat and she slid off his back. “Race you!” she screamed to Jasper just before she bolted up.

Isabel got to the top first.

“You had a head start,” Jasper said.

“What do you want to do?” Isabel asked.

“Let's brush our hair,” Jasper said. The sooner they finished brushing, the sooner he could go home and stop worrying about getting licked by Isabel or her dog.

Isabel seemed excited about hair brushing. She left Jasper in her room while she raced off for the brush.

Jasper was surprised that Isabel's room wasn't pink. It was lots of colors, but what Jasper noticed most was the set of drums in the corner. There was even a stool to sit on while you played. He went over and tapped his fingers on a drum. Nothing.

“Your drums are broken,” Jasper told Isabel when she came back with the brush and a big tube of something that looked like lime Jell-O toothpaste.

Isabel laughed. “You have to turn them on.” She pressed a button. “Try it now.”

Jasper picked a drumstick off the floor and tapped the cymbal. It made a soft
chunka
sound.

“Like this,” Isabel said, attacking the drums with the hairbrush. The room filled with crashing and thumping. It sounded like the whole house was falling down.

“Izz-y!” Isabel's mother shouted from downstairs.

“Never mind,” said Isabel. “Let's get brushing.”

She dragged Jasper over to the bed and made him sit cross-legged while she knelt in front of him. She brushed his hair so hard Jasper squinched his eyes closed. Jasper felt something cold and wet on his head. “What's that?” he asked.

“Hair gel,” Isabel said. “Turn this way.”

Jasper turned his head. He saw right out her bedroom window into the backyard. “Is that a trampoline?” he asked.

“Yes. Now turn your head the other way.”

When Isabel finished gelling Jasper, she sat back to look at him. She laughed so hard she toppled onto her side.

“What?” Jasper touched his head. It was covered with wet spikes.

Isabel handed him the brush. “Your turn now.”

“Do I have to?”

“No. It's boring,” Isabel said. “Let's do something else.”

“Can we jump on the trampoline?” Jasper asked.

“Sure. Let's have a snack first.”

This time Jasper was ready to race Isabel downstairs, but Isabel threw one leg over the banister and slid down faster than he could run. She beat him to the fridge, too. From the rack on the door, she took a jar of jam.

“Aren't we going to put it on bread or anything?” Jasper asked when she handed him a spoon from the drawer.

“Do you want some bread?”

“No. But what will your mom say?”

“She's working,” Isabel said.

Through the kitchen door, Jasper could see Isabel's mom watching TV in the living room. He said, “She has a good job. My mom works in an office in our basement.”

“That's not my mom,” Isabel said. “That's Mandy, my nanny.”

They sat on the floor and ate the jam out of the jar with spoons. Rollo came over. He seemed even bigger when they were on the floor, like a big, slobbery horse whose ears hung down. Isabel pushed him away.

“Look, Jasper.” She smeared some jam on her lips.

Jasper laughed.

“I'll put some on you, too,” she said.

Then they went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Jasper's hair had hardened into spikes and his mouth was lipsticked with jam. He was a little disappointed that his hair wasn't green.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's go jump.”

When Mom came to pick up Jasper from his playdate, Jasper and Isabel were still jumping on the trampoline. Jasper couldn't stop. He loved the flip-floppy feeling in his stomach. He loved how, if he fell straight back — whee! — in a second he'd be on his feet again. Mom talked for a few minutes to Mandy, who was watching them from the back deck. Then Mom said, “Jasper. Time to go.”

“No!”

“Yes. Your dad has supper ready.”

Jasper climbed back down onto solid ground. It was boring. There was no spring to it.

“Say thank you to Isabel,” Mom said.

“You're welcome, Jasper!” Isabel said, sliding off the trampoline and flinging herself at Jasper. He had to duck behind Mom.

“Can Jasper have a playdate tomorrow?” Isabel asked.

“Can I?” Jasper asked, and Mom laughed.

On the drive home, Mom kept looking at Jasper in the rearview mirror and smiling to herself. She didn't ask him about the playdate, not until later, when they were eating supper.

“So?” she said. “I noticed you weren't inside brushing your hair.”

Jasper said, “She brushed mine, but I wouldn't brush hers.”

Dad said, “Your hair sure looks different.”

Jasper touched his head. At the back, it felt crunchy. The behind spikes had been flattened when he landed on his back on the trampoline. In front, he had three horns.

“And she put lipstick on me, too,” Jasper complained. “Did you get her phone number?”

Mom smiled at Dad. “Jasper wants to go back tomorrow for another playdate.”

“Tomorrow already? That's serious,” Dad said. “What's she like, this Isabel?”

“She's covered in freckles and has no front teeth,” Jasper said.

“Wow,” Dad said. “She sounds gorgeous.”